Should we be splitting up for Dino?

spinnytop · January 2017

Everyone always says it "small group does better on Dino". So when we have a buttload of people and a 2nd zone opens up, why don't we split off into two groups, one in each zone? Why sit there bashing our heads against the dino in the hope that eventually enough people will get frustrated and leave?

But Spinny, that means not everyone will get the reward from both zones! Yeah and in the current method everyone who gets frustrated or has to leave for rl reasons doesn't get any of the reward.

But Spinny we would have to organize to make sure both groups have what they need! Yep, and that is something our community needs to keep working on.

But Spinny everyone from one zone would try to hop into the other zone due to the perception that the other zone is the more successful one! And after that leads to continued failure they'll learn. Or they won't and we'll just be where we are now, but at least we tried - yeah we wasted some time trying something new, but we waste a lot of time at Dino now anyway.

pantagruel01 · January 2017

spinnytop said:
Everyone always says it "small group does better on Dino". So when we have a buttload of people and a 2nd zone opens up, why don't we split off into two groups, one in each zone?

Mostly because it's not really true. Small groups, to the extent they actually do better (I've seen plenty of small groups fail), do so because they have a different player mix than large groups.

spinnytop · January 2017

So there is a concrete reason why smaller groups do better than large groups, one that could be taken advantage of by splitting up.

pantagruel01 · January 2017

spinnytop said:
So there is a concrete reason why smaller groups do better than large groups, one that could be taken advantage of by splitting up.

As long as splitting up is "all bad players in one zone (which will inevitably fail)", sure. The advantage small groups have is a smaller number of people with net negative contributions.

spinnytop · January 2017

pantagruel01 said:
As long as splitting up is "all bad players in one zone (which will inevitably fail)", sure.

I agree with you that one of the weaknesses of our community is the ability to assist players in becoming better.

pantagruel01 · January 2017

spinnytop said:

pantagruel01 said:
As long as splitting up is "all bad players in one zone (which will inevitably fail)", sure.
I agree with you that one of the weaknesses of our community is the ability to assist players in becoming better.

The point is this: the dino is not actually easier for a small group. The dino is easier for a group with a higher ratio of experienced players to inexperienced players, and on average periods of low server population have a higher ratio of experienced to inexperienced players online. Therefore, runs during periods of low server population tend to go smoother. This is not an effect that can be replicated by just splitting into two zones.

shaun98ca2 · January 2017

Do these Cosmics scale with the # of people participating? I would think 5 well organized people with 20 other idiots would do better than the 5 well organized alone.

Though the one Cosmic with dogs I can see be annoying but a little use of chat can simply make that go better.

servantrules · January 2017

shaun98ca2 said:
Do these Cosmics scale with the # of people participating? I would think 5 well organized people with 20 other idiots would do better than the 5 well organized alone.

Yeah, they do, Teleiosaurus and Eidolon (specifically the guardians) in particular. With Dino, every participant counts toward how much damage they have to deal individually during DPS check. Now, since not all will be reaching the numbers (Tanks and Support will likely be tied up, for instance), the DPS will have to be good enough to carry (for lack of a better term) the deficit. If even one or 2 DPS comes up short, the check would likely fail.

That said, a small group is not a guarantee of better success, just that the quality of players involved may potentially be better (emphasis on "potentially").

spinnytop · January 2017

shaun98ca2 said:
Do these Cosmics scale with the # of people participating? I would think 5 well organized people with 20 other idiots would do better than the 5 well organized alone.

Actually with that ratio it's likely that every cosmic would be impossible. 5 and 20? No chance. And that's the issue - our pool of skilled players is kind of small so as the group gets bigger you're likely to overwhelm the skilled portion with the unskilled portion, and as the group becomes larger it becomes more difficult to manage. If you were to split the group in half, with some skilled players going to either side, you would have two manageable groups where the skilled players aren't being overwhelmed and potentially have an easier time getting through to people. Granted first we would need the ability to actually get people to do this, so until we learn that as a community then we will continue being burdened by our own inability to organize with anything other than the most dedicated players.

roughbearmattach · January 2017

Logistically issue: Zone Chat.

If running two cosmics at the same time in different instances of the same zone, chat can get messy and confusing. Local chat can be used, of course, though I don't know it's in-game range.

The ideal would be to use Team Up chat, but that channel is so little used--folks would really have to be encourage switch over, and reminded to repeatedly. Otherwise, folks might just wonder why Zone was so quiet during the Cosmic fight.

The chat issue could be solved, but it would require some additional planning.

xacchaeus · January 2017

can barely get an OM run done properly, and you think this would work? lol

spinnytop · January 2017

roughbearmattach said:
The ideal would be to use Team Up chat, but that channel is so little used--folks would really have to be encourage switch over, and reminded to repeatedly. Otherwise, folks might just wonder why Zone was so quiet during the Cosmic fight.

That's what I was thinking too. Getting people to do things really is something that our community needs to work on.

xacchaeus said:
can barely get an OM run done properly, and you think this would work? lol

Well not with that attitude Nancy Negative-Pants

vonqball · January 2017

I think a big group would actually be better (in theory). You only need a small number of tanks and healers. So, with a big team there is more room for a larger % of DPS toons. But yeah, that theory seems pretty far from reality. Like folks have said, it is a ratio of experienced to inexperienced players issue.. halving the number won't change that ratio.

I think there are some very helpful people around, who are happy to answer questions and whatnot... others just respond with smart-assery and fly away on their lil anime wings.

spinnytop · January 2017

vonqball said:
I think there are some very helpful people around, who are happy to answer questions and whatnot... others just respond with smart-assery and fly away on their lil anime wings.

I see you've never actually talked to me or seen me in game o3o

vonqball · January 2017

^I think you're probably just too cool to notice me :P

spinnytop · January 2017

Probably.

mithrosnomore · January 2017

spinnytop said:

shaun98ca2 said:
Do these Cosmics scale with the # of people participating? I would think 5 well organized people with 20 other idiots would do better than the 5 well organized alone.
Actually with that ratio it's likely that every cosmic would be impossible. 5 and 20? No chance. And that's the issue - our pool of skilled players is kind of small so as the group gets bigger you're likely to overwhelm the skilled portion with the unskilled portion, and as the group becomes larger it becomes more difficult to manage. If you were to split the group in half, with some skilled players going to either side, you would have two manageable groups where the skilled players aren't being overwhelmed and potentially have an easier time getting through to people. Granted first we would need the ability to actually get people to do this, so until we learn that as a community then we will continue being burdened by our own inability to organize with anything other than the most dedicated players.

I do not see how this follows.

If we have, for example, 10 "experienced" players and 30 players with little or no experience getting ready to fight Dinomom, how is it easier if 5 experienced players try to organize 15 novices?

Why not just use zone chat, tell everyone what they need to do, and try to pull everyone through?
And that pulling everyone through part becomes easier when you have some top-notch DPS helping cover the newbies.
Split up the vets and you might have all the vets on tanking duty (and/or CCing when it applies).

If the problem is the mix of ATs/roles then maybe splitting up works... If 8 tanks show up then yeah, 4 of those tanks could work the fight in each zone.

But just based on the experience level of the people that gather?
If those 15 in instance 1 will listen and those 15 in instance 2 will listen then there's no reason why those 30 shouldn't listen if they were all together in the same instance.

And as an added benefit, they would get experience twice as fast by fighting Dinomom 1 and then Dinomom 2 as they would be splitting into two groups.

spinnytop · January 2017

It's based on the fact that I see larger groups struggle more often than smaller groups. Something about the scaling at higher numbers seems to make the checks less forgiving.

Also I don't think the ratios are quite that severe if it's not monster week. 10:30 seems like a monster week ratio... maybe even worse than monster week.

lezard21 · January 2017

spinnytop said:
It's based on the fact that I see larger groups struggle more often than smaller groups. Something about the scaling at higher numbers seems to make the checks less forgiving.

This is wrong. It's actually quite the opposite. The scaling graphic is a curve, with more players the DPS required per player for checks is lower.

spinnytop · January 2017

lezard21 said:

This is wrong. It's actually quite the opposite. The scaling graphic is a curve, with more players the DPS required per player for checks is lower.

Interesting. So why does it seem that larger groups struggle more?

pwestolemyname · January 2017

There are any number of reasons why smaller groups are easier.

1) Less shoving. It is much easier to maneuver when there is enough space.

2) Fewer people dying. If we have 2 healers healing 16 people, way fewer will die, percentage-wise, than if we have 2 healers healing 40. Less dying people means more DPS.

3) Easier to coordinate.

4) Fewer people who refuse to read.

The "fewer is better" principle applies to nearly every situation. Easiest Slug I ever did was with 5 of us. At Ape, fewer people mean fewer lava pools to step it. At Kiga, fewer people to live, fewer people to die, much easier for healers to keep them up. At Eido, fewer people means fewer geysers.

It is an odd thing the devs have done. They have created missions where it seems to invite massive numbers of players, yet creating them such that fewer players actually have a higher chance of success.

roughbearmattach · January 2017

pwestolemyname said:

It is an odd thing the devs have done. They have created missions where it seems to invite massive numbers of players, yet creating them such that fewer players actually have a higher chance of success.

Also, consider how auras work. They cap at twenty players each. Large groups don't usually have a mass of folks using auras in Support role. So, if a 40 hero group has 3 folks with sorcery auras, some folks get all 3, some get 2, some get just one. If a twenty person group has 3 folks with sorcery auras, everyone gets all three. That can be quite a boon, especially since other aspects of the Cosmic (healing, DPS check, lava pools) will scale down with the smaller group, as the effect of auras scales up.

spinnytop · January 2017

Some very good points.

lezard21 · January 2017

spinnytop said:

lezard21 said:

This is wrong. It's actually quite the opposite. The scaling graphic is a curve, with more players the DPS required per player for checks is lower.
Interesting. So why does it seem that larger groups struggle more?

Multiple reasons that can be boiled down to quality vs quantity.

But to elaborate, let's continue to assume that the check per player is 10k (although lately I'm starting to believe it's more around the 20k mark). In a 20 man raid, generally (and ideally) you'll have 2-3 people (not counting tanks and healers) that by the time of the check will be either dead, holding block, slacking off, or have generally low burst. To make up for them, you only need 1 or 2 players with a burst of 40k or higher, which one is frequently present in raids.

Now in a 40-50 man raid the number of people dieing, holding block, slacking off or generally having low burst increases for more out of control reasons than just "bad player shows up": reduced space for melee to position themselves resulting in pushing and getting into tail range, Aura limit cap reducing the potential burst of some players, server performance issue due to the high number of players causing latency issues screwing up timing of blocks for people who do that, healers having a hard time keeping track of who is taking damage or not,etc. Of course in 40-50 raids you also have redundant roles, ie. more tannks, healers than are needed. So in 40-50 man raids, generally you have 5-10 players that are not actively contributing during checks, which is harder to pick up.

The reverse situations do happen too, having a majority of people slacking in smaller raids, but it's rarer.

pantagruel01 · January 2017

spinnytop said:
Interesting. So why does it seem that larger groups struggle more?

Usually because the larger groups have more people doing dumb things. A full zone can actually power through failed dps checks, they do more damage in the time between checks than the dino heals.

mithrosnomore · January 2017

pantagruel01 said:
A full zone can actually power through failed dps checks, they do more damage in the time between checks than the dino heals.

I noticed this two or three days ago.
The group wasn't making all of the DPS checks, but was dealing enough sustained DPS between checks that Dinomom was still losing HPs.

pwestolemyname · February 2017

mithrosnomore said:

pantagruel01 said:
A full zone can actually power through failed dps checks, they do more damage in the time between checks than the dino heals.
I noticed this two or three days ago.
The group wasn't making all of the DPS checks, but was dealing enough sustained DPS between checks that Dinomom was still losing HPs.

Only because we had a serious amount of debuffing going on.

pantagruel01 · February 2017

pwestolemyname said:

mithrosnomore said:

pantagruel01 said:
A full zone can actually power through failed dps checks, they do more damage in the time between checks than the dino heals.
I noticed this two or three days ago.
The group wasn't making all of the DPS checks, but was dealing enough sustained DPS between checks that Dinomom was still losing HPs.
Only because we had a serious amount of debuffing going on.

Debuffing helps with dps checks just as much as it does with sustained dps. Looking at the numbers, on a full zone fight we think that the combined dps required to beat a check is not higher than 100k, and is probably less. Dinomom appears to have both a partial fail heal of ~2m hp and a full fail heal of ~4m hp.

Burning through 2m hp in 40s (about the time you have between heal checks, excluding the resistant periods) requires a team dps of 50k, and a lot of characters don't have that much spike ability, so an average dps of 50k might mean a spike dps averaging 75k, with some variance based on things like baby behavior. That won't reliably beat heal checks, but it probably beats enough checks that you gradually grind the mama down.

darqaura2 · February 2017

spinnytop said:

pantagruel01 said:
As long as splitting up is "all bad players in one zone (which will inevitably fail)", sure.
I agree with you that one of the weaknesses of our community is the ability to assist players in becoming better.

Why would anyone want to become better when 90% of the game can be facerolled.

And there are no real in-game tutorial missions about how to. Or the necessity to.

How many tutorials missions are in game that explain what SCR are or GCR or why you should care?

There really is no reason for you to get better unless you want the gear. If you don't care about the gear (or very specific costume pieces) you don't chase Cosmics or Rampages or TA. And thus have no incentive to get better.

spinnytop · February 2017

I guess for you "getting gear" is the only reason you might have. For me it's just fun to get better at games and overcome new challenges, which I would be doing in CO even without any new gear to get ( as evidenced by all those years I did exactly that ). Guess we're not all automatons like you darq

PS - there's more on those vendors than gear. feel free to take a look some time!

darqaura2 · February 2017

spinnytop said:
I guess for you "getting gear" is the only reason you might have. For me it's just fun to get better at games and overcome new challenges, which I would be doing in CO even without any new gear to get ( as evidenced by all those years I did exactly that ). Guess we're not all automatons like you darq

PS - there's more on those vendors than gear. feel free to take a look some time!

I have. I've gotten 90% of what's there. The rest I have no interest in.

And true getting better at a game can be it's own reward. I have OTHER games for that. Namely Marvel vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter IV and V, Guilty Gear Xrd, etc.

I don't find CO interesting enough for that.

But to each their own.

PS: My point about folks in general in this game not getting better because 90% of the game can be facerolled still stands. There really is no ramp up of challenge in this game. It just goes from easy mode to BAM, Cosmics, TA and Rampages with no warning. Part of the reason why I have interest in CO for that.

mithrosnomore · February 2017

Just wanted to add, not too many days ago, I think last weekend, there were two instances of MI; One full, one with enough people that wanted to do Dino that they started out anyway.

Where zone 1 (1 is just for reference here. It may or may not have been the actual zone 1), the full zone, struggled, zone 2 was making solid progress with the much smaller team.

At least until some of the folks in zone 1 decided to come over and "help".
Suddenly checks were being failed and Dinomom's HP bar was going the wrong way.

We eventually got it done, but it took a lot longer than it should have.

This doesn't really change where I stand on the issue; I think that if so many tanks and healers show up that there could be two groups then two groups is probably for the best.
Not that there should be any special effort to get two groups, just that if what shows up would make for two workable groups that it could be considered.

Of course, as much as the fight needs some good tanks and healers, the quality of DPS matters much more for this fight than it does for Kiga or Qwyjibo, so if all the "right" DPSers go one way, some people, particularly those that have been around for a while, may quickly recognize that they are in the "wrong" zone and may abandon ship.

You end up with only one zone doing anything remotely approaching a serious attempt in that case and so it's back to status quo.

Do this zone then move over and do that zone, with some people left out of each attempt due to zone cap limits.

Should we be splitting up for Dino?

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